Perhaps I first should have consulted my horoscope in the local newspaper. But I can't imagine what it could have said that might have warned me off. So, in blissful ignorance, I went to the local big-box consumer-electronics chain retailer and laid down my lettuce. I thought I was buying the SACD version of Norah Jones' Come Away With Me (Blue Note 5 41472 8), but, by the end of the affair, I felt I'd gotten The Royal Scam (footnote 1).

From the October 2004 issue, Larry Greenhill reviews the REL Studio III subwoofer, explaining, "Determined to experience sub-bass in my listening room, I arranged with REL's US importer, Sumiko Audio, to audition their largest subwoofer, the Studio III."

You hear a dismaying amount of bad sound on the Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention floor. Tizzy high frequencies and mushy bass are more common than not, but encouragingly, good-sounding products tend to draw small crowds or generate a buzz among attendees.

Is there a future for high-resolution recordings? Why do so many people fail to hear a difference between them and ordinary CDs? Why do some purportedly high-rez discs sound so bad? What obstacles does the audio industry face in trying to make high-rez a commercial success?

Once upon a time there was a violin maker who had two quarrelsome sons, and their names were John and Rudolf. When the boys came of age, their father put them to work in his shop, but John and Rudolf found it difficult to get along with one another, and they quarreled even more bitterly after the old man died.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised when I first spied the prototypes for Sonic Frontiers' luscious new digital combo, the Transport 3 CD transport and Processor 3 D/A processor, at HI-FI '97 in San Francisco. After all, this is the company whose meteoric rise from an electronic parts-supply outfit run out of president Chris Johnson's basement, to a large factory pumping out an impressive array of entry-level to crème de la crème tube electronic components, has elevated Sonic Frontiers to front-line status among high-end manufacturers.

Introduced in 2003, Siltech's G5 Classic series of cables evolved from their highly regarded Generation 3. The G3 series introduced a new metallurgy in which small amounts of gold were incorporated into the silver used as conductors. The G5 Classics use a proprietary geometry called X-balanced Micro Technology, which, according to Siltech, makes the G5s the quietest cables, with the lowest distortion, to be found. Kapton, Peek, and Teflon insulation is used, and the cables are designed to minimize the pickup of RF and EM interference, with low inductance, low capacitance, and low resistance as design goals.